September 6, 2019

Long. Damn. Day.
I’m grateful for
Um
Dogs. I guess.
And cats are kind of okay.
Of course, I love my kids, and for about a minute a month, I like them.
Friends and family are funny sometimes, and they give me nice cards and rides because they don’t like the way I drive.
Work doesn’t suck.
The woods are nice, and the ocean feels good on my skin.
Chocolate helps.
And bed is bliss.

April 5, 2018

It’s my last semester of school, and one of the assignments is to write two to three times a week in a Communication Technology journal. The idea is for us to recognize the day to day impact technology has on our lives, and the way we relate to each other.

For the record, I’m pretty aware of technology, and the impact it’s had on human interactions. I own two teenagers, and work at a college, where I am surrounded by many, many teenagers, all looking for chargers, lost headphones, or the wifi password. I work at a place where colleagues and I will email each other information when sitting less than three feet from each other. I work at a place that has about twenty times more screens than books, and understand, that is the way things are now, so I don’t need to be reminded that technology is the almost the norm in most day to day conversations.

I sound grumpy about this, and I’m not. Technology has allowed me to share my essays and poems with an audience that doesn’t consist of Mom and my friend that just lost his job and will to listen to anything. It’s an easy way to remind someone to clean their room, without having to listen to the response or the lack of one. I enjoy crafting a well written email, I appreciate always having a camera, (I never had a camera, or if I did, I could never find it. Now, if I can’t find my camera, I can call it.)

My own issue with technology is once I’ve started, it’s hard to stop. Right now, I’m wrapping up this assignment so I can go downstairs and spend some time with my dog, Sophie, the Most Significant Child, because she will remain one. But I just noticed a text from a student on my phone, my laptop is already open. If I answer the text, I’m going to end up on the website. If I look on the website, I’ll spot an incorrect date, or remember I was supposed to email the woman from Madison Park about a tour. Once I email her, I’ll remember I haven’t called my mother yet today, because the woman from Madison Park is named Cindy, and Mom is Sheila, and I really do like talking to my mom. She’ll ask me how Sophie is, because she’s afraid to ask about the kids this late at night, she’s a worrier, and I’ll feel guilty because Sophie will be downstairs, waiting, and has been since I started this entry.

So, I’ll prove myself wrong, and just stop. It is hard to walk away from technology, but at the end of the day, I’d rather spend some time with Sophie, the Silent. She’s aware I’m spending too little time at the park, and too much time chattering, one way or another, on screens. Sophie is not a fan.

December 4, 2016

There is alcohol. Wine, fancy cocktails with basil floating in them like pine needles, and beer.

There are long, dark wood walks with a dog that follows, lingers, then sprints to a pile of damp leaves. There is the observation of joy, as she thrashes in gold and rusty brown and dirt. When she jumps into the van, my sweet girl smells like she was out all night, and it’s Thursday afternoon.

There is work, swallowing handfuls of chocolate chips from the fridge meant for Sunday pancakes, dinners out at restaurants I can’t afford, where we share appetizers and order just one more.

There is splitting the check even though I ordered just one more, and knowing it’s understood. I needed that.

There is time with friends.

There are phone calls to mom, and not calling mom, because I don’t want her to know details. There is knowing she is there to listen to the details if it comes to that.

There is music from when I was his age, and his own music, the inappropriate language, the grinding bass, the beat. There is time at the gym, lifting metal, finding downward dog in a room full of women who look they don’t have a clue even though probably half of them have been where I am now.

There are impassioned conversations about Trump, the Supreme Court, moving to Canada, the latest from Trump.

There the memes of Obama and Biden.

There is tv and slippers and sleeping pills and falling asleep with the tv on so I don’t have to think about anything but the carefully written dialogue written by writers on another coast that belong to a union and are probably talking about Trump right now.

There is knowing, somewhere, in my head, this is not cancer. It is not Alzheimer’s, or living without heat, or living alone, or being old, and wishing for what will never come again.

When I find myself dealing with another variety of grief, I may or may not turn to the same these things I have found along this journey.

Inside this life of mine, right now, I still find bliss and laughter, even though this heart of mine weighs more than my whole house, weights more than anything I have ever carried.

I have found a way to lift this heart and love this child and move forward into the tomorrow and next month.

Sometimes I can’t. Sometimes my knees buckle and I lean knowing I have lost it all. I find myself on the sofa, wishing I had softer socks, or a magazine, or a softer pillow, or it was ten years ago.

Then my daughter asks me to sign her permission slip. A student calls with a question. Sophie sighs in her sleep and I know she is dreaming of bunnies.

So I pull myself up and I take myself down to my bedroom. I find sleep, I do not dream of bunnies, that I know of anyway.

But I wake up next to Sophie and that helps.

My family is home with me tonight. I’m a little bit angry and totally blessed.

August 12, 2016

I am a forty five year old woman flat on the floor on my belly on top of a blanket used by someone I don’t know.

It’s hot.

I sought out the air conditioner in Colin’s room about 4 am.

I look up at him, I watch the sheets for rise and fall, I listen for his breath.

I wait to see him jump and glare

At the discovery of me, his mom, on the floor, settled in the middle of his floor. I didn’t knock.

The floor is sticky, it smells like beer, new leather, sweaty socks, cheap perfume and axe cologne.

Along his walls are the pictures from his teams last year, taped up on paint, edges curling at the corners. There is a Celtics pennant, a phone number in blue marker on the door.

I don’t think he’s taken a breath. Maybe he knows I’m here, and is only breathing while I peer inside his bookshelf.

I wonder why he has his Latin Book from 7th grade, the bird books my mother gave him three years in a row for Christmas and a picture of his sister, stashed inside a stack of Pokemon. He did a mass cleanup months ago, and I thought everything was gone except for twelve busted chargers, a game remote and some condoms.

I wonder where this pillows been, who this blanket held. The cotton doesn’t smell.

I think I washed them. Maybe he left them out in hopes I’d wander up to cool my skin.

No. He left them there because I told him not too.

Still hasn’t breathed.

Are those crayons?

The air conditioner is louder than thunder, rap music, Sophie in yard, all together, raised up thousand times.

He’s breathing. I just can’t hear it under the sound of my own breath, the a/c, and my tired, noisy, achy heart.

Should I check on him?

My neck is cool,

finally.

The hair inside my neck falls down across the pillow case,

my toes are cold and reach to tuck inside the blanket. I turn the pillow over. I roll to face his closet.

The door is closed. Thank God. The door is closed. He sighs, my back is turned and he sighs and, I think, shifts his body.

His body is all legs, elbows, knees, scabs, sneers, sweat, prickly hair on his head, he uses product, I see product right there, by the closet door. That’s expensive stuff. That’s mine.

We wear the same hair product. I think of this while I lay on the floor of my son’s bedroom.

I am cool. I am spent.

I am afraid he’ll trip over me when he wakes.

I’m afraid he’ll trip on me when he wakes and do it on purpose.

My son and I are in a room together. He sleeps. I gaze at artifacts, yawn, stretch, wonder if I should leave now before he wakes.

We are both still. He sleeps, I hope his dreams remind him I wasn’t always the woman that woke every day determined to ruin his life.

I wait for sleep, pull my knees close to my chest, let my eyelids fall, tears fall down, it’s been so long